


Years From Now

by gelbes_gilatier



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Fluff, POV Female Character, Temporal Observatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelbes_gilatier/pseuds/gelbes_gilatier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a dancing lesson on the <i>Enterprise</i> for Malcolm Reed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years From Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnneRuane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneRuane/gifts).



> I'm honestly not sure whether this is uber-kitschy or really wonderful. I had some issues starting to write it but once I found the right song with the right rhythm for it, it was amazingly easy. Also, I have only ever read Hoshi/Malcolm until now and never written them before so... does this make sense? Is it okay? Do you like it?

** Years From Now **

_“Years from now,_   
_I’ll want you years from now_   
_And I’ll you years from now_   
_as I love you tonight.”_

_Dr. Hook, “Years From Now”_

She knows she shouldn’t be so curious. She knows she should stick to the languages and work on the UT’s programming, take care of her newest insights in the syntax of Andorian. But then again, there’s the temporal observatory. It’s lying in the science lab, waiting to be examined, even though the Captain would have it rather destroyed, like the last one. Everyone’s going to have their turn to examine and she’s sure hers will come, too but damn…

The thing is, she needs something beautiful. She’s _yearning_ for it because there’s been so much death and destruction lately and really, there’s only so much time that you can look out at a black expanse dotted with points of light. Everyone says how much they love space and how beautiful it is and on most days agrees. But right now, it’s one of the _other_ days. One of those that she feels cooped up on the ship, the rooms becoming smaller and smaller, the air feeling stale, the people too many, too crowdy… oh for Heaven’s sake.

It’s in the middle of the night and three quarters of the ship are asleep. Besides, if she puts it back before the next shift starts… what’s the harm? With a huff, she gets up from her cot and makes her way to the Sciences lab, looking for the box containing… ah. Good thing she’s bridge crew. There would have been no way to find out the key sequence to open it otherwise.

So… now that she’s got it… what the hell to do with it? She _could_ switch it on right here… but she’d still be in a lab and she’d still feel cooped up. She needs something with space, something… an empty cargo hold should do. With a few finger taps she brings up a query to see which ones are currently unoccupied and she finds one, not that far away even.

With new resolves, the takes up the temporal observatory and marches to the cargo hold. After double checking that it really is pressurized, she opens the door, walks in and places the little device on the floor right in the middle. Now, how did that temporal agent activate the first one that came onto the _Enterprise_ … ah, right.

After a short sequence of switches and buttons… the room is suddenly filled with lines and cubes and circles and globes… all weaving and waving, sometimes apart, sometimes together and it is just so _wonderful_ … that she doesn’t notice that she never shut the door until she hears someone say in a clipped British accent, “I don’t recall it being your turn with that thing yet, Ensign.”

Her first impulse is a long and vicious stream of curses in about four languages but she can keep herself in check, knowing she’d probably spook Lieutenant Reed enough that he would think she’s some alien that infiltrated the ship in from of Ensign Hoshi Sato. So she swallows them down and instead says, “I, uh…”

And… that’s it. Once again, she sounded like a green little ensign, even after four years on the bridge of Starfleet’s most prestigious ship. Something about him makes her into that and for that, she resents him. So… she does something that he told him. “What are _you_ doing here, anyway?” That’s right, a best defense is a good offence.

“Didn’t you forget something, Ensign?” He has no right to raise his eyebrow and form his mouth into a slight grin with an ironic touch. No right, whatsoever.

But then again, it’s not that he’s _wrong_ , either. She gives a mental little sigh and says, “What are you doing here, _sir_?”

For a moment, just a tiny one, she can see a smug expression on his face amidst the timelines swirling around them… and then it vanishes and something entire else – kind of undecipherable but definitely not good – crosses his face and all he says is, “Never mind. I was just… Anyway. As you were, Ensign.”

Mh. That looked very much like the awkwardness he keeps displaying whenever he meets her off-duty, ever since the E2 and the things people started to whisper about them after that. It’s downright painful to watch confident Malcolm Reed like that. She sighs. “Wait, sir.”

For a moment, it looks as if he hasn’t heard her – or maybe doesn’t _want_ to have heard her – but then he stills and turns around after another second. “What is it, Ensign?”

Well, Hoshi. What _is_ it? Only half consciously, her fingers knot around each other, hands clasped tightly. “Is… whatever you wanted to do here, sir… is it anything I can help you with?”

Inscrutable Lieutenant Reed looks very much… _pained_ and she wonders what she did to him _now_ until he says. “Ah… actually… do you know how to read those?”

She blinks. How did he get from the door to the middle of the room so fast? What did she just miss? But anyway… he holds out something that looks suspiciously like _paper_ at her and she takes it, reverently. The last time she saw something like this was in a library on Earth, behind glass. She marveled at it, a mythical material. Of course everyone knows that people used it for hundreds of years before digitalizing started but to actually _see_ it… that was something entirely else. Now what… “Ensign?”

All she does is throwing him a glare because not even she can decipher a pile of drawings in under two seconds. To her surprise, he’s actually silent, even backing of a small step with his hands raised. Huh. So… what… huh. Okay, that _could_ be a human foot… left one, actually. And this is a right one… and arrows. Oh. Wait. Oh, really…

“There is nothing funny about it, Ensign.” Actually, it is. Even more so with him looking at her like he’s looking now. All frowning and disapproving and just a little embarrassed.

But yes, he still outranks her so she tries to get her giggling under control. After clearing her throat three times, she manages something akin to decorum and says, “It’s a dancing map, sir.”

There might or might not have been a very low growl. Also, a very _sexy_ low growl. So she hopes there wasn’t. “I _know_ what it is, Ensign. I just can’t… read it.”

Oh, right. Mh. This doesn’t look like any of the dances she… no, wait, that’s a waltz. A very old version of it, maybe two or three hundred years old. She smiles. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how to dance a waltz, sir.”

Even with the low lighting in the room and the timeline still dancing around them, she can see his look growing darker. “I _know_ how to dance a waltz. I just don’t know how to dance _this_ one.” And why is it so important that he… “My mother asked me to learn it. Heaven knows why but she says she’s going to put the old man on me if I don’t know how to dance it when I come home next.” Which would be in two days’ time approximately.

Mh.

She knows of Lieutenant Reed’s… strained relationship with his father, from bits and pieces she overheard when she went past his quarters and hear him talking to his sister and once to Captain Archer…

Ah, hell. No guts, no glory and all that.

Gently she folds the map and puts in on the ground, next to the temporal observatory. He’s about to start sputtering, probably because it’s a priceless old thing, but an odd bout of courage makes her step up to him and put his right hand on her shoulder blade and takes his left, bringing them both into dance pose. Amazing how easy it is to startle him into complete obedience.

However he’s still looking confused and mildly irritated so she moves to explain, “When I was at the Academy, our Social Graces instructor told me that you can’t learn dancing from a map or an instruction sheet. You have to _dance_ to learn dancing.”

He’s about to protest but she tries to be brave just for once and tells him, “Put your right foot forward… now to the side… now the left foot…”

And he does.

For some weird, inexplicable reason, he does and he doesn’t stop looking at her, all intent and concentrated and… _intense_. Probably because he does everything he does with intensity and… and he’s a good lead, steering her through the cargo hold once she introduced him to turns and twists and all the time, all the time… she smiles a secret little smile. All the time, time is swirling around them, enveloping them, wrapping itself around them, letting them go… “Ensign?”

She blinks. “Sir?”

“Has anyone ever told you that…” That what? “That you… are really easy to lead?” Oh, seriously? Really? Did he just really say that? Even though she _bets_ he’d wanted something completely else? Men are idiots.

But then again… “That’s all you, sir.”

And the most wonderful thing happens.

He laughs.

A low, low laugh, more of a vibration than a sound, pulsing through her and making her body… _hum_. For just a moment, a tiny, infinitesimally small moment, they’re perfectly in synch. Everything is right. Everything is as it should be. Everything is as she ever wanted it to be. Everything is brilliant.

And time swirling around them knows that years from now, it will still be the same. Every time they dance, it will be like this. So time is content to let them have their first dance in a cargo hold without music, among glittering lines and shapes that tell of past, present and future. There are so many more to come, years and years from now.  


End file.
